Pointe Shoes
by The.Dragon.Singer
Summary: A picture speaks a thousand words, and a single moment could change a life.


**QUIDDITCH LEAGUE FANFICTION COMPETITION: ROUND 10 ENTRY FOR CHASER 2 OF CHUDLEY CANNONS**

**TASK: **_Save_ Colin Creevey

**PROMPTS: **

**N/A**

**Word Count (Microsoft Word): 1093**

* * *

Colin somehow knew that something was wrong as he poked his head into his sister's shared dressing room. It was a gut feeling he had, and as he watched his older sister knot the ribbons of her pointe shoes, he frowned deeply.

Anna reached for a bobby on the counter and caught her brother's brown eyes in the mirror. Colin smiled at her and received a small smile in return. Anna was the eldest of the Creevey siblings, and she looked very much like their late mother, Beatrice. The two Creevey ladies shared their dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and willowy stature.

She was also a Muggle.

When Colin had received his Hogwarts letter, and Professor Sprout had come to speak to his dad, Anna had watched it all happen from the sidelines, with her dance bag over her shoulder while she waited for a lift. His soon-to-be Herbology professor had taken over an hour to go over everything, and Dennis had been the one to notice that Anna had left their small flat.

While Professor Sprout guided them around Diagon Alley for the first time, Anna had followed with a thin smile at his excitement, clutching her elbows to her tiny frame. Dennis had been the one to pry her hands away and make her smile that day.

She'd been there to see him off to Hogwarts and had dutifully listened to the wonders of magic when he returned home for Christmas break, sprouting stories of _needles_-_turned_-_to_-_matchsticks_, and _potions_, and _moving pictures_. She'd read and replied to all his letters, and then listened some more over the summer as he had regaled them with tales of famous Harry Potter, and a giant snake in the school. Their father had been fascinated with this new way of life for his son, and then suddenly Dennis was holding a letter too.

Anna had watched as the Creevey boys jumped around the kitchen together, exclaiming about how much fun they would have together, and how it was so great. She had looked at the worried expression her fathers face as he dutifully calculated how much it would cost for supplies. Anna didn't join them for the second trip to Diagon Ally, because she had started working at the local grocery store that day. It was Dennis, four months into their Hogwarts escapades, who realized that Anna hadn't sent them a letter.

Their return for Christmas holidays had been spent comparing their first years for their father, while Anna sat in a chair by the fire with a textbook in her lap and a tired expression.

It was in Colin's fourth year at Hogwarts, the Umbridge Year, when their father sent them a letter explaining that they would have to stay at school for the Christmas holidays; he and Anna would be in New York, settling her into her new school.

Dennis had been the brother to announce that their sister had become an exchange student at Canada's Nation Ballet School, proudly crowing about it to his friends at the breakfast table and gathering interest from those surrounding him. Colin had actually known she was doing ballet.

Standing in the doorway of her dressing room, Colin realized that he didn't know his sister anymore. He loved her, as one does with family, but he didn't know what she liked to read, or what she drank with breakfast or her favorite shampoo.

"Hello Colin," she greeted him around another bobby pin carefully holding her feathered headband in place.

"Hullo Anna," he replied. "Break a leg,"

"Thank you. You should get to your seat with papa and Dennis,"

He had nodded and then left her with her fellow dancers.

* * *

Twenty-six-year-old Colin Creevey sighed heavily as he lowered himself into his desk chair, and fiddled with his camera.

The tenth-anniversary ball of the Battle of Hogwarts had just finished, and he was pooped. He had flitted through the party all night, capturing moments between well-known witches and wizards, most former fighters from that night.

That night.

That night ten years ago, while his fellow Gryffindors had all fought so bravely, warding off waves of Death Eaters, fighting for their lives, he had been seated in a slightly uncomfortable theatre chair, watching his older sister prance across the stage in Tchaikovsky's _Swan_ _Lake_. Dennis had been the one to take the picture currently standing in the corner of his office desk; four young ladies, all dressed in crisp white tutus, traveling hand in hand across the stage.

Dennis had been the one to convince Colin to stay; fourteen-year-old Dennis, who had pried his brother's fingers from around the burning Galleon in his pocket. Fourteen-year-old Dennis who loved his sister, who was proud of her, who had nearly ended up in Hufflepuff because his loyalties lay with his family.

"Stay,"

Colin had stayed, he had presented his sister with a bouget of pink roses and a long hug. He had joined her and her friends for a celebratory dinner and had taken a picture of the three Creevey siblings, grinning ear-to-ear in front of a prominent Canadian flag.

And while he had been gallivanting around, his peers at Hogwarts had been prying bodies from mounds of rubble, separating the Death Eaters from the Aurors, tending to their wounded.

The pile of unread Daily Prophets in Colin's room had been topped with a headline of '_Boy-Who-Lives Wins; The Dark Lord Defeated_' when he had entered. He had stared at it in horror, and when it registered that he had missed the battle to end the war, he'd jumped to his feet and laughed.

Laughed until he realized that his friends could be dead, and then he frantically wrote letters and tossed them to the Creevey family owl to deliver.

Dennis had opted to return to Hogwarts the following September, and Colin had cautiously followed his lead, watching the jumpy older students huddle together but laugh, and the parents relax without the worry of looking over their shoulders for danger. There had been plenty of new ghosts as they returned, most notable for Colin the appearance of Fred Weasley, who laughed as Peeves dropped paint balloons from midair.

Colin had graduated and immediately jumped into a job at the Daily Prophet, trusty camera in hand. He had attended the wedding of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley a few years later, and then his brother's a few months after that, and finally, he'd gotten an invitation to Anna's wedding.

A spring wedding with her Canadian beau, set on May 2nd.

Colin didn't go.


End file.
